Automated market maker MonoX has today announced a debut capital raise of $5 million from venture firms including the likes of Axia8 Ventures, Animoca Brands, Divergence Ventures, among others. MonoX will use the funds to support its ambitions in reducing the capital and liquidity prerequisites for decentralized finance (DeFi) projects offering swap, lending, borrowing and derivative capabilities on decentralized exchanges (DEXes). The protocol will achieve this through the introduction of a single-sided liquidity model. Though not a revolutionary concept for liquidity pools, it will aim to support the DeFi ecosystem’s growth. In traditional DEXes such as Uniswap, industry projects require …

In the ever-evolving world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, the race to establish a highly scalable, user-friendly network capable of being adopted on a global scale is a never-ending marathon where new competitors regularly join in on the race. Bitcoin is undoubtedly the market leader when it comes to network security, active users and market capitalization value, while Ethereum has thus far established itself as the top smart contracts platform, but the continued difficulty in getting these networks to scale has opened the door for next-generation blockchain protocols to gain a foothold in the market. The tenuous nature of Ethereum’s …

Blockchain fintech company XREX has concluded a $17 million pre-A investment round led by a consortium of global investors, underscoring heightened institutional demand for crypto-focused startups. The consortium was driven by CDIB Capital Group, a publicly traded company in Taiwan, and includes investors from major banks and venture capital firms in North America, Europe and Asia. Several other publicly listed companies also participated in the investment round, including SBI Investment, which is a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, ThreeD Capital, E.Sun Venture Capital and Systex Corporation. Black Marble, New Economy Ventures, Metaplanet Holdings, Seraph Group and the Taiwan government’s National Development …

Gelato Network, a protocol that automates smart contract executions on Ethereum (ETH), has integrated with decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator Zerion to help users better manage liquidity when interacting with decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap. The partnership enables Zerion’s over 200,000 monthly active users to have their Uniswap v3 positions managed automatically, Gelato Network announced Tuesday. “With this integration, Zerion has become the go-to DeFi aggregator to natively offer fungible Uniswap v3 LP positions at a massive scale,” they said. Gelato Network has been designed to address liquidity challenges in cryptocurrency markets emanating from extreme price volatility. Wild price swings, like …

Large price jumps and 100x gains get a lot of attention from pundits and influencers in the cryptocurrency community because they offer the hope of overnight riches. In reality, these opportunities are few and far between. Not to mention, only a handful of traders actually manage to catch these waves and cash out in time to lock in life-changing money. Fortunately, catching a large price surge is far from being the only way for crypto investors to make a buck, and the recent rise of decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the slow march of mainstream crypto adoption provides …

Karura, the Kusama implementation of the Acala protocol, has launched its decentralized exchange (DEX) platform, Karura Swap. According to the announcement issued on Friday, the DEX platform is now live, with KSM/KAR being the first trading pair on the exchange. Per details provided by the announcement, Karura Swap has gone live with an initial total value locked north of $3.4 million, with more than 1,000 unique liquidity providers (LP). The team revealed that the DEX launch highlighted the benefits of its “Bootstrap feature” that provides a liquidity sandbox for trading pairs with the walled environment, reportedly preventing front-running and market …

United Kingdom-based crypto fund Nickel Digital Asset Management released a survey of 100 wealth managers and global institutional investors to find out the biggest investor concerns associated with crypto. The survey features respondents from the United States, France, Germany, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, who collectively own $275 billion in assets under management. Conducted online from May to June 2021, the survey found low confidence among institutional investors in crypto security, with 76% of respondents citing concerns about the security of custodial services as one factor stopping them from investing in crypto. Respondents also identified the regulatory …

A decentralized exchange says its unique dual mining mechanism delivers transaction fees that are “close to zero” — including for major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. MDEX says a blend of liquidity mining and transaction mining results in a deeper liquidity pool and lower slippage, as well as a more user-friendly experience. Data from CoinMarketCap shows that transaction volumes across the blockchains it uses have surpassed big names such as PancakeSwap, Sushiswap and 1inch. MDEX has come a long way since the project launched on Jan. 6. Within a month, the project claims single-day transaction volumes exceeded $1 billion — a …

Ether (ETH) perhaps had the most bullish outlook entering the July session, with the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 promising to make ETH scarcer through the network’s first-ever burning mechanism. But so far into the month, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has vastly tailed its top rival Bitcoin (BTC). The positive correlation was visible on Tuesday, following the New York opening bell when Ether plunged below $2,000 to hit a two-week low in sync with Bitcoin, which slipped below $32,500. As it happened, the ETH/USD exchange rate reached its intraday low of $1,961.10 following a 3.43% drop. The pair’s …

An up-and-coming decentralized exchange has gone cross chain as it “plants new seeds to grow the jungle.” ApeSwap’s plans to expand to Polygon were driven by an awareness of the multi-chain trend that has emerged in the blockchain sector — and a desire to remain at the cutting edge when it comes to DeFi. The project’s team has also recruited 10 of its close partners on Binance Smart Chain to join them, helping to create an entire DeFi ecosystem on Polygon overnight. The launch has been executed with the full support of the Polygon team through co-marketing and MATIC liquidity …

American megabank JPMorgan has continued criticizing El Salvador’s declaration of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender, warning of the potential risks for both the country and the cryptocurrency. A JPMorgan expert group led by economist Steven Palacio released a report suggesting that El Salvador adopting BTC as legal tender could put a strain on the Bitcoin network, Bloomberg reported Sunday. The experts said that Bitcoin is highly illiquid, noting that most Bitcoin trading volumes are internalized by major exchanges, with more than 90% of Bitcoin not changing hands in more than a year. The use of Bitcoin as legal tender in …

Crypto and blockchain enthusiasts take pride in belonging to a community that is working on the future of financial systems. Yet, the community is innately fragmented thanks to multiple blockchains working independently of each other. The dream of mass adoption of blockchain and decentralized finance faces a major hurdle: a lack of interoperability. Meanwhile, decentralized applications (DApps) — the fruits of decentralization — are being held up. DApp developers face difficulties while transacting between different blockchain networks, and the reason behind this is they are stuck in the Ethereum ecosystem. Despite having the best infrastructure, Ethereum is losing its foothold. …